I tested out Plasma 5 and wrote a blog post detailing what I thought of it and what it says about the current state of the Linux ecosystem. Link below, but be warned... it's not positive.

http://linuxadventures.net/2015/01/26/p ... ecosystem/

Is this supposed to be constructive criticism? If it should be then I think you failed to communicate that.
Just finger pointing gets us nowhere. Have you done anything to improve the situation?

I think this is very constructive. Just because it's full of negative observations doesn't make it any less constructive. We need to hear hard truths sometimes and I find the reflections on version numbering and user experience extremely constructive.

Some of us have recently been discussing this on the PCLinuxOS forum. (See http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,130926.0.html for the thread.) I and another have come to the opinion that good though the principle of Free Software is, there is a fundamental flaw in the model for delivering what society really needs, because users are insufficiently valued, since they don't pay for what they use. As currently constituted Free Software advances the needs of developers (and the companies that employ them) rather than the world as a whole.

The same is true of the Internet. Because content is free to access, it is usually paid for by advertising, which distorts the market and users end up getting what advertisers want them to see rather than what they themselves want. It's also a major reason why American TV news looks so parochial to anyone from another country when they visit. American TV, paid for by advertisers, has no incentive to give viewers in-depth information on the effects of big business on the environment or economic activity on the other side of the world; such information would not educate consumption in the advertisers' desired direction.

The problem with Free Software and therefore with KDE is that we get what the developers want to play with rather than what the consumer needs. I discovered that the hard way when Kmail moved from the KDE3 version to KDE4. I lost compatibility with my archived messages. That archive mattered more to me than any new features added to the program. In the end I had to migrate to Thunderbird because I couldn't risk staying with Kmail when it didn't see the importance of stable functionality.

I'm under no illusions about Mozilla. They also operate in the Free Software environment with its one fundamental flaw. On the whole, what KDE and others produce is very good, and I like it, but the breaks in continuity which obsolete data on which my life relies are a deal-breaker for the end user. So are distributions which adopt default applications which are not yet ready for mainstream use. So are application developers who decide to depend on controversial systems not everyone is happy to adopt. Of course, we are free to fork, but that means huge and unnecessarily wasteful duplication of effort, and not everyone has the resources to do that, especially since the users aren't paying.

I actually came to the conclusion that truly Free Software is not compatible with free-of-charge distribution, because it puts the developers and their paymasters above the end user and wider society, which wants to be able to depend on the product. However, with the current versions of the GPL, non-free (of charge) distribution simply isn't protected from undercutting.

Saying there is a need for a rethink isn't destructive. It's recognising there's a problem which still awaits solution.

Not every developer has a paymaster, unless you consider that paymaster being them self

It's hard to complain about something that's free, just talk to MS users about Vista and Windows 8 and what about uefi (which will require me to purchase a new graphics card if I wish to use gpt).

As devs do the work, devs and those who pay them (if they are paid) get to make the decisions but it is a group decision within that group of developers - how is that unfair? How can a small group of devs working on their own time in a lot of cases meet all the wants of a much larger group of users.

How is it wrong to at some points to change technologies for easier development and greater functionality or to get rid of unmaintainable code?

Remember everything is freely forkable and there are many alternates to various apps and de's and even to the kernel (which I'm guessing isn't much of a democracy)

If you and others want a bigger voice in how things are done contribute to the coding or develop alternatives

Finally do you really care about systemd? Why? Because its monolithic and the kernel isn't? Personally I don't care - my distro (as will a large majority of distros - a really large %), uses it and it works Something that lower level in the os beyond my interest

Oh, and yea I wish lots of thing were different but I don't code so I can't submit added functionality or create new apps

How do you purpose things were done differently remembering to incorporate the limited resources available?

PS - I like many others do this on my own time and without any renumeration so kindly don't attack me because of my opinions

No one says anyone is doing anything wrong. We're just recognising there are people in the world and there is a world that needs good, reliable software, and the two models for providing it (commercial and Free) are both flawed from the ordinary user's viewpoint.

What we're identifying is a huge unmet need which probably needs a new model to meet it.

What is my objection to systemd? Only that in a Free Software world it shouldn't be compulsory. There should be a choice as to whether to use it or not. A desktop and programming environment should be portable, independent of particular low-level components. Not everyone who wants to run KDE will run systemd, so why not enable a choice? Otherwise, there will be people whose chosen distribution no longer runs it who will find themselves shut out of huge tranches of software.

It's contrary to the principles of both Unix and Free Software and so far as I can tell, both Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman oppose systemd, and that's pretty good company to be in.

that's, imo, a valid argument (but my opinion is pretty irrelevant in that discussion) - I'm not sure how you get that decision revisited but I don't think this will be where it takes place.

per http://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torv ... s-systemd/

Linus Torvalds said:

"I don't actually have any particularly strong opinions on systemd itself. I've had issues with some of the core developers that I think are much too cavalier about bugs and compatibility, and I think some of the design details are insane (I dislike the binary logs, for example), but those are details, not big issues."

lapdatphongnet wrote:Is this supposed to be constructive criticism? If it should be then I think you failed to communicate that.
Just finger pointing gets us nowhere. Have you done anything to improve the situation?

It's probably more constructive than your own... and "vootey's" earlier post.

vootey wrote:Is this supposed to be constructive criticism? If it should be then I think you failed to communicate that.
Just finger pointing gets us nowhere. Have you done anything to improve the situation?

A case of "great minds think alike"...?

You test beta release and complain. You must understand, that first beta/alpha have many changes, because it contains changes, which don't be merged into previous stable release.

kjpetrie wrote:No one says anyone is doing anything wrong. We're just recognising there are people in the world and there is a world that needs good, reliable software, and the two models for providing it (commercial and Free) are both flawed from the ordinary user's viewpoint.

What we're identifying is a huge unmet need which probably needs a new model to meet it.

What is my objection to systemd? Only that in a Free Software world it shouldn't be compulsory. There should be a choice as to whether to use it or not. A desktop and programming environment should be portable, independent of particular low-level components. Not everyone who wants to run KDE will run systemd, so why not enable a choice? Otherwise, there will be people whose chosen distribution no longer runs it who will find themselves shut out of huge tranches of software.

It's contrary to the principles of both Unix and Free Software and so far as I can tell, both Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman oppose systemd, and that's pretty good company to be in.

We don't need new model. Free Software is great. Remember, that Free Software don't mean free in paid. Users can donate process of creating software. Look at Haiku and Bundle system, etc. Libre Office could be donated by goverments instead of purchase for MS Licenses. And governments, what's great in Free Software, decided, which functionality they needs, as users paying in bundle decided, which functionality they needs.